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Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#31

Post by knodi123 »

swaptr wrote: post #14
knodi123 wrote: post #7

Back in high school, we had a pascal programming class. The teacher had a rule, no video games on the computers unless you write them yourself. I think he was being tongue in cheek, but I wrote a few simple arcade games, and he was true to his word. But students started playing my games instead of working on the assignments. So he said no games until you turn in your assignment for the day. Not a very dramatic exampl…

That's such a fun story! I'm really impressed. Do you happen to still have any of those games around by any chance?

No! I'm super bummed. I had them burned to CD, but then a hot texas summer destroyed the CD. Although, like the cartoons I enjoyed as a child, my games are probably better off being remembered than actually re-read as an experienced software engineer. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#33

Post by al_borland »

While not addictive, I’ve made tools at work that people become dependent on. They were quick and dirty solutions to make things a bit easier than the manual process people typically did. If the tool broke for some reason, they’ll throw up their hands and think they can’t do the work anymore, instead of doing what they had done before it existed. They also won’t tell me it isn’t working, so I have no idea.

I really have no idea how to solve this. With one of the bigger ones, I handed it off to someone still in the trenches recently. He’s closer to the work, so it makes sense that he can see when it’s broken and be empowered to fix it himself. At the same time, he learns some new skills and reaches out to me when he has questions.

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#34

Post by notaharvardmba »

cmdrtaco wrote: post #29

Yes.

Your creation led to younger me becoming a much better person. I learned when I was being a know it all vs Insightful or Funny. Probably the single greatest learning environment ever created. Yeah, probably would have gotten more work done without it existing, but I wouldn’t have social skills or know as much correct facts about everything. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#36

Post by neontomo »

vijitdhingra wrote: post #30

I built https://rockyai.me/ (chrome extension to chat with any webpage) for my personal use tbh but ended up putting it on the store for others to use as well. One of my friends sent it to his data who is retired and consumes a lot of news articles online. I see his dad using the extension a few times every few hours now to summarize things / get more background on stories.

so do you look at the users data?

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#37

Post by gaws »

franze wrote: post #5

In 2004 my boss - I was a one man team technical business development at the Austria Press Agency - came to me and told me "our press release clients want to get better found in that Google". At that time I saw it as a nice, fun project. too my knowledge I was one of the first in my market on corporate state who took on this topic. which later came to be called search engine optimization. I was definitely one of the…

> 20 years later we screwed up the internet.

But, you all got rich... right?

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#38

Post by crush_robo_1536 »

neontomo wrote: post #36
vijitdhingra wrote: post #30

I built https://rockyai.me/ (chrome extension to chat with any webpage) for my personal use tbh but ended up putting it on the store for others to use as well. One of my friends sent it to his data who is retired and consumes a lot of news articles online. I see his dad using the extension a few times every few hours now to summarize things / get more background on stories.

so do you look at the users data?

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#39

Post by franze »

gaws wrote: post #37
franze wrote: post #5

In 2004 my boss - I was a one man team technical business development at the Austria Press Agency - came to me and told me "our press release clients want to get better found in that Google". At that time I saw it as a nice, fun project. too my knowledge I was one of the first in my market on corporate state who took on this topic. which later came to be called search engine optimization. I was definitely one of the…

> 20 years later we screwed up the internet. But, you all got rich... right?

well kinda, I work as a Yoga Teacher now.

Re: Ask HN: Have you built something that users have become addicted to or overused?

#40

Post by satvikpendem »

welder wrote: post #10

Yes, I created a leaderboard for programmers and recently found some people using it as motivation to sleep less, spending 18 hour energy drink fueled days coding for up to a month at a time. [0] > How do you feel about its impact Even though it's not healthy, I let it happen to a point. I reach out by email about the health impacts. Some people say, "I plan to stop at the end of the month". > have you taken steps, l…

I used Wakatime, had to uninstall after I had the opposite problem, I realized I didn't really care about how much time I spent coding, and it had somewhat constant notifications if I recall correctly.
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